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4.2 Lofar Kit

1. Introduction	At a cost of about 500 thousands Euros it is possible to buy the technical instrumentation necessary to install a remote station. We are referring to sensors (200 antennas on the whole), electronics directly installed on the antennas. On the contrary a more expensive investment would be necessary to find a suitable site for this station; then this site would have to be connected to the national data transfer network through a broadband (fiber) link. From this point of view Medicina station presents very favourable conditions since it is one of the European VLBI network nodes and it is connected to the national backbone network with high capacity broadband link. It represents a very relevant facility for the installation of the LOFAR remote station, whose data could also be transferred through this infrastructure. Moreover Medicina station includes a wide piece of land near the radio telescopes, a stable and flat area, far enough from towns and power lines that are cause of strong interferences, so it is very suitable to be a LOFAR remote station site.
2. The Core
3.Technical Details
3.1 The System
3.2 Data processing
3.3 Antennas spec.
4.Lofar at Medicina
4.1 Baseline extension
4.2 Lofar Kit
4.3 Superstation
5. Science

It would be necessary to work out an adequate power supply and data transfer network between the site and the high data rate network node, then the station could immediately be installed. From the technological and engineering point of view, the effort in this case is to be considered rather limited, especially if compared to the scientific and technical revenues.

To summarize, with a relatively small economical effort it would be possible to obtain the required equipment to install a LOFAR remote station in Medicina, taking part in the consortium, having immediately all the forementioned advantages; all that with a very small logistic effort. The advantages of this solution would be important also for the consortium itself, since the overall baseline of the radio telescope would result considerably increased, with a consequent improvement of the angular resolution.

A great number of relevant benefits could be achieved for Medicina station:

the possibility to use one of the most powerful and innovative instruments for the radio astronomical research: Italian scientists could make new important discoveries in cosmological field (studying the origin of our Universe) and in particle physics field.
the realization of the Super-Station would guarantee in short time an improvemente in sensitivity of the whole instrument.

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